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Review - Threads

Artist: David S. Ware String Ensemble

September 18, 2003 at 4:00 AM

Let's face it, your average free-jazz improviser is more entertaining than, say, the Stooges-loving impresario down the street. Give a few seconds to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Sam Rivers or even out-there blower Arthur Doyle, and you get an idea of the absurd xenoglossia in performers on par energy-wise with James Brown. Luckily, this combination of atonal innovation and firebrand saxophone-wielding mysticism has become the pursuit of New York's David S. Ware. Akin to Wynston Marsalis' preservation of jazz's roots, Ware is completing the historical re-enactment of jazz's avant past by continually looking forward. His consistent blowing in and out of the Coltrane corpus is always a rewarding experience, and "Threads" -- with its strings and synths and compositional density -- defines itself as a treasure.